Prey #18 - Phantom Prey

✍ Scribed by John Sandford

• Publisher: Penguin;G.P. Putnam's Sons
• Year: 2008
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 206 KB
• Category: Fiction

✦ Synopsis

From Publishers Weekly

In bestseller Sandford's solid 18th Prey novel (after Invisible Prey), Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension agent Lucas Davenport, who's received numerous promotions in the course of the series, ought to be taking the desk aspects of his job more seriously. But the man remains more comfortable working a stakeout, interviewing suspects and taking down bad guys than he is filling out personnel evaluation forms on his staff—which explains why he's still getting shot at, peeping at a cocaine dealer's wife hoping for a glimpse of her husband and, at his wife's behest, looking into the unsolved kidnapping and presumed murder of a wealthy young woman into the goth scene. It becomes clear that a serial killer is targeting goths as well as anyone, including Lucas, who gets in the way. While some pretty murky psychology encumbers the plot, Sandford delivers the kind of riveting action that keeps thriller fans turning the pages. (May)
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From Booklist

Frances Austin is a missing heiress. Traces of blood in her well-connected mother Alyssa’s home lead Lucas Davenport, head of Minnesota’s Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, to assume the worst, but without a body, he can’t be sure. The investigation centers on Frances’ involvement in the Twin Cities’ goth community. The goths’ collective obsession with death and darkness makes them an obvious starting point, but Davenport believes it’s a form of youthful angst rather than an inherently evil social trend. But when other young goths connected to Frances are murdered, Davenport is forced to rethink his theory. Like all good investigators, he follows the money, in this case, a $50,000 withdrawal from Frances’ account and its subsequent disbursement over a 20-day period preceding Frances’ disappearance. When Davenport is wounded coming out of a goth club after conducting a series of background interviews, he realizes he’s closing in on the killer but has no idea who or why. The eighteenth entry in the best-selling Prey series is Sandford’s usual mix of clever plotting, gallows humor, and explosive action, but this time he mixes in a bit of the seemingly supernatural. Davenport doesn’t realize it—and neither will readers—but he’s actually working on two cases. The solution to one is mundanely tragic; the second genuinely disturbing. Expect another trip to the best-seller lists for one of the most consistently entertaining crime writers working today. --Wes Lukowsky